Viewpoint: Why Tough-Love Rehab Won’t Die

A second and often crucial part of the appeal of tough-love programs is that they often claim a high “success” rate. City Without Drugs, for example, claims 70% success. The Times notes that the Russian organization has no studies to back this contention. But, in America, tough rehabs have found a way around the lack of evidence: a clever statistical trick that creates the illusion of effective care.

Consider that the harsher the rehab program, the more likely people are to drop out. So those who stick with it are typically those who are most motivated to stop taking drugs in the first place — and would have likely succeeded with any program. If you include only the people who “graduate” in your success rate, it’s easy to make even the most abusive program appear effective.

Do the math: about 80% of people who start a harsh, punishing rehab regimen will drop out within days or weeks. That leaves 20% eligible for graduation: the 15% of the original group who were highly motivated to get clean and another 5% who will eventually relapse. If you count only this smaller group, however, your success rate will be an impressive 75%. (This is the kind of math that allowed early research on the granddaddy of tough love rehabs, Synanon, to “show” that it worked.)

Of course, if you don’t actually allow people to drop out, such data manipulation is impossible. That’s why the Vietnamese forced-labor rehab programs’ official success rate is just 20% to 30%, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), and possibly as low as 5%, according to a 2009 WHO report.

In a new Human Rights Watch report that reveals that some 40,000 people are being subjected to this form of rehab in Vietnam, the organization described one addict’s treatment this way:

Que Phong … was in his late 20s when his family encouraged him to go to one of the Binh Phuoc centers for drug dependency treatment. He agreed to get help for his heroin addiction and signed up for what he thought would be 12 months of treatment. Instead, he endured five years of forced labor, torture and abuse.

During his time at the center, Que Phong was given a daily quota of cashews to husk and peel. Although the caustic resin from the cashews burnt his hands, he was forced to work for six or seven hours a day. Asked why he performed such hazardous work, he said:

If you refused to work they slapped you. If you still refused to work then they sent you to the punishment room. Everyone worked. …

Although he had entered voluntarily, Que Phong was not free to leave: the center management told him that his time in “drug treatment” was extended, first by an extra year, then by an extra three. Throughout, he continued to work and receive beatings. On one occasion, when caught playing cards with other detainees, center staff tied his hands behind his back and beat him with a truncheon for an hour.

Under reasonable standards, such conduct would never be proposed as medical care. But the third factor that continually keeps reviving tough-love programs is the stigma associated with addiction. Even among those who have learned to call addiction a disease, that contention is rarely carried to its logical conclusions.

Instead, addicts are seen as people who take unearned pleasure, as enemies of the war on drugs, as unproductive parasites against whom all discrimination is justified. The popularly drawn caricature of the addict is strikingly similar to the most offensive racist stereotypes.

When people with addiction are sufficiently dehumanized in the public’s perception, it becomes easy to believe that punishment is the only type of treatment able to “get through” to the brutes. And once abuse is recast as care, therapy easily slips into torture.

No one would propose such treatment regimes for multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s. Therapy for these conditions is left to trained doctors, not to fellow patients, for-profit programs or the police. Addiction treatment should similarly be based on evidence, not prejudice.

Maia Szalavitz is a health writer at TIME.com. Find her on Twitter at @maiasz. You can also continue the discussion on TIME Healthland’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIMEHealthland.

Merely sadism and greed, and the people who are ignorant and used to the dehumanization of illicit drug users let it go on. I can't really understand how people tolerate these and other abuses.. Don't most people have to be trained to be this sociopathic? I'm afraid I can't read about this stuff without getting very angry.

The simple fact is that a certain number of people want to see addicts/alcoholics/juvenile deliquents/"troubled youth" etc. ad nauseum suffer. They have been troublesome to someone....and that person and others want to "get back at" him/her/them. When you consider that it is far less expensive to operate a "treatment center" where the "therapy" consists of psychological and physical abuse than it is to operate one with educated and able staff, a second motive becomes clear. After all, the abusive "treatment centers" are reimbursed at the same rate as those which offer genuine medical treatment.